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Best Job Ad Ever: ‘You’re Our Kind Of Sicko’

This job post truly is blowing up on the Internet after getting picked up by the Mother Jones tumblr yesterday. It is blowing up so much that a Washington Post reporter is writing about it.

A refresher of some of the best lines:
“Our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede.”

“If you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.”

“We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterfucks….We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up).”

When contacted by Romenesko, the author, Matthew Doig, said he was “just mystified that this little job post has resonated with so many people in the business.” It is the first time he has ever posted a job, so maybe there will be more to come like this.

Doig did add, though, that he took the same approach when applying for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where he now works (and where you could too) ten years ago. “The guy who hired me at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Chris Davis, told me he never even read the clips I sent. He just loved the cover letter. And he and I have gotten along about as well as any reporter and editor can, so my strategy must have worked.”

We think this ad and this applicant would be a match made in heaven…if only the Good Doctor were still around.